Boundaries, pubs and Battersea - thoughts on defining place

A few years ago, I instituted an initiative aimed at ensuring that every community in Bradford undertook some form of local planning – this could take the form of neighbourhood action planning, parish plans or elements within wider masterplans or spatial strategies. In part, at least, I can lay claim to attempting to develop the idea of community involvement in service planning – dare I say it, the “Big Society”.

However, this introduction isn’t a precursor to an essay of self-justification but rather an opportunity to discuss again the issue of places and how we define them. Most important, the matter of boundaries. Partly, this is prompted by Battersea Councillor, James Cousins’ irritation (verging on anger) with ASDA for suggesting that his local store is – horror of horrors – in Clapham. James gives very good account of his case and (I suspect) has a rather better grasp of where Battersea becomes Clapham than does ASDA.

However, there are some interesting anomalies of place that can add to this confusion and not just the perfect example of nominal coterminosity – Penge and Anerley. And since we’re talking local knowledge here, I have concentrated on examples from my ward – the incomparable Bingley Rural. And several of the examples will feature pubs!

The Dog & Gun – as everyone knows – is in Oxenhope. Except that, until very recently, it wasn’t it was in Denholme and had always been in Denholme (we should note that the pub car park was in the Parish of Oxenhope whereas the pub itself was in the Town of Denholme). Today – following some jiggery-pokery with te boundary commission – the pub is in Oxenhope.

The Guide is at Hainworth, Keighley of course – that’s the community it serves (along with the clutches of stray bikers who wash up in its car park). Well no – The Guide’s in Cullingworth and always has been!

The Malt Shovel at Harden completes this trio of pubs. It’s not in Harden but in Wilsden (although the thoughful folk from Wilsden Parish Council have put the obligatory sandstone “Welcome to Wilsden” marker beyond the pub). Harden doesn’t start until you’ve cross the Harden Beck.

There are plenty of other examples – the White Horse at Well Heads isn’t in Thornton but in Denholme and the New Coley Garden Centre (see it’s not all pubs!) is in Cullingworth not Denholme. As you can see it isn’t at all clear – boundaries are (as I’ve said before) fuzzy, subject to change and without doubt open to dispute. And, as I’m sure you’ve all guessed, unpopular places get smaller while popular places get larger (it’s OK James I’m not suggesting this is the case with Battersea and Clapham).

In a discussion about Chapeltown in Leeds this trend was noticed – places like Potternewton and Chapel Allerton grow in size as places previously in Chapeltown are ‘liberated’ from that place’s bad image. Just as snootier residents of SE20 started calling it Anerley rather than Penge, the up-and-coming trendies moving into Chapeltown are renaming it Potternewton or Chapel Allerton. Unless, of course, we’re talking about reports of crime! In these cases any shooting within two miles takes place in Chapeltown!

All this really makes the point that places aren't static – boundaries can and do change. And, in the end it’s people rather than institutions that decide where the boundary lies. In Bradford – for the exercise described at the start – we mapped the location of people on the council’s neighbourhoods database who claimed to live in a given place (Wibsey, Queensbury, West Bowling, Heaton, etc) and drew boundaries based on these definitions. And yes there were some overlaps but most communities were clear and identifiable – certainly good enough to deliver the project.

But we decide not folk from elsewhere.

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More on fuzzy boundaries: The Great Ward Boundary Dispute of 2003 and other tales

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As you leave Cullingworth and head for the A629 in the direction of Denholme there is a fuzzy moment. It’s OK, there’s not some discontinuity in the space-time continuum – one of those shaky camera moments beloved of Dr Who. The fuzzy moment refers to the boundary. There are two rows on terraces either side of what is called Doctor’s Bridge (for reasons unknown to me) one of which is in the Parish of Cullingworth and one in the Town of Denholme. However, the post office thinks both terraces are in Cullingworth and the Council thinks both are in Denholme. The boundary here is fuzzy but that fuzziness really doesn’t matter – it seems unlikely that open warfare will erupt between the two villages making the fuzzy boundary a quaint curiosity rather than a potential problem.

However, where we live is important to our sense of being. I may be able to announce myself – in a fit of libertarian grandiloquence – as a ‘citizen of the world’ but when it comes down to it, that’s a pretty meaningless statement insofar as you want to understand who I am. I’ve said before that one of the great weaknesses of fundamentalist liberalism is that is doesn’t grasp the idea – let alone the importance – of place. The response to my fuzzy boundary observation might well be ‘so what’ which rather misses the point.

Which takes us to how we determine the boundaries of place – and just as importantly, who decides those edges? We could talk about how betopied colonialists with bristling moustaches and swagger sticks drew arbitrary lines on the map thereby creating the conditions for all the wars of today’s world. But this discussion is to laden with preconceived ideas, sacred cows and bigotry for us to understand the issue of the fuzzy boundary. So, in the spirit of understanding, I shall stick close to Cullingworth and will consider the “Great Ward Boundary Dispute” of 2003.

In 2002 and 2003 there was a review of ward boundaries for the Bradford Metropolitan District. This was needed to equalise the size of the wards and to capture – in our political boundaries – the changes since the previous review back in the 1980s. As a result of this review – and I’ll spare you the full gory detail – it was proposed that a small part of Bingley Rural ward would be moved into the adjacent Heaton ward. This small part consisted of a little place called New Brighton and thirty or so houses on Stoney Ridge Road and North Bank Road.

In the end New Brighton remained happily located within Bingley Rural but the transfer of the Stoney Ridge and North Bank area resulted in a terrible outcry. They were being moved ‘into Bradford’ which would reduce their house values, raise their insurance prices and visit upon the all kinds of terrible plagues. These houses are in Bingley and should not be moved out of Bingley – every historical, moral and social imperative said this (to borrow from Peppone) and the proposal was an outrage. (I have added some extra eggs to this to make the point).

We now have a fuzzy edge – thirty or so houses that the post office places in Bingley were now in Heaton ward. The ancient boundary between Bingley and Bradford has been corrupted just as the Shipley-Bradford boundary was breached by the attaching of Frizinghall to Heaton. On one level it doesn’t really matter but it does rather illustrate how the imposition of boundaries by well-meaning outsiders can prove something of a problem. Indeed the result may just be as Giovanni Guareschi imagined!

Fontanile was divided from the "capital" by just such a stream, and for twenty years no one had seen so much water in it. Night had fallen, but Don Camillo paced nervously up and down the road leading along the bank. His nervousness did not pass until he heard the brakes of a big car. The car was full of policemen, and with their arrival Don Camillo went back to the rectory and hung his shotgun on the wall. After supper Peppone came to see him, looking very glum.

"Did you call the police?" he asked Don Camillo.

"Of course I did, after you staged that diversion at Case Nuove in order to have a free hand for your other mischief, yes, and after you cut the telephone and telegraph wires, too."

Peppone looked at him scornfully.

"You're a traitor!" he said. "You asked for foreign aid. A man without a country, that's what you are!"

Or, God forbid, worse.

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Fuzzy boundaries, rational behaviour, rule-breaking and Laws

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As the newspapers and airwaves are dominated by another example of a politician interpreting expenses rules rather creatively, I thought I would join in with the Great David Laws furore. Not to make a judgment as to whether he should resign, should abase himself before the public or have fifty lashes with the cat o’ nine tails, but to ask a broader question about rules and why we break them.

In doing this I am minded of the fact that we all break rules – sometimes because we don’t like them or agree with them but mostly because either we believe we will get away with our transgression or else the likely punishment is too minor to be a real concern to us. I recall being told of how, outside a certain school, a particular car was ticketed (for parking right outside the gates, on double yellow lines, on a corner within a set of traffic lights) time and time again. In the end, a policeman spoke to the woman as she parked and was told ‘oh, just give me a ticket, my husband will pay it.’

In this case the woman opted to take the consequences of parking closer to the school gates. She saw it as worthwhile – an affordable risk – and behaved accordingly. In a similar manner we (or most of us) routinely break speed limits and trim the edges of a host of other regulatory constraints (tell me you’ve never driven the short hop from the corner shop to home without putting on your seatbelt). The chances of getting caught are very small and – in most cases – the consequences that follow being caught are also small.

Apply this to other circumstances in life – have you ever been given a blank receipt by a taxi driver? What about that insurance claim – how creative were you? And what about sneaking an unwanted letter back into the bag while playing scrabble? I could go on listing examples – petty and not so petty – of how we are surrounded by the temptation of rule-breaking. Indeed some folk take the view that it is perfectly OK to be entirely selective as to which rules to abide by and which rules to ignore.

Partly, all this is a plea to take heed of Christ’s advice in Matt 7:5 (remove the log from your own eye and you’ll see more clearly to remove the mote from your brother’s) but mostly it’s to understand that like everything else, our attitude to rules is entirely rational. Rule-breaking is perfectly normal, rational behaviour – it must be because we all break rules and many of us do so every day. At the same time, our irritation, annoyance or even anger at the rule-breaking of others is also rational behaviour. Plus of course our insistence that rules are tightened, punishments lifted and transgressors exposed.

Rules serve one of two purposes – they enforce equality (by which I don’t mean modern “equalities” but rather that rules ensure we all play the same game – that our engagement with society is ‘fair’) or they allow control. In recent times we have seen a significant sub-set of laws for control – the use of regulation to ‘change behaviour’. In general we place greater importance on laws of equality since these are the laws that protect us and our property. These laws enjoy overwhelming support and their breach is seen as a very serious matter.

Rules of control, however, are less likely to enjoy overwhelming support as they are about governing our behaviour rather than regulating the game. We also (and this is reflected in punishments) see the boundaries of these laws in very fuzzy terms being willing to forgive less significant transgression under some circumstances. This brings with it the risk of arbitrariness – on the agency charged with enforcement acting inconsistently. While there’s no evidence of police bias against red cars, you are more likely to be stopped by the police if you are black and many enforcement decisions are based on value judgments made by officers – all this is evidence of inconsistency. And, as rational actors in this game, we do not like inconsistency since it means we cannot know if the rules of equality apply. Yet we acquiesce in fuzzy applications – we see it as OK for the copper to let the woman off a speeding fine but to slap the full fine on the boy racer who commits the same offence.

And, of course, where there is expectation of leniency there is a greater incentive to break the rules. Look, for example, at the relatively benign world of fines for overstaying in a car park. Even where the risk is considerable (a substantial charge to remove a wheel clamp) people routinely believe that the “I was only a couple of minutes late” argument will work. But look at it from the operator’s perspective and such fuzziness is not rational – enforcing the time is entirely sensible as the alternative is to have space that is occupied but not income-generating.

For public enforcement agencies, on the other hand, fuzziness gives power. The ability of the copper to stop or not stop, charge or not charge is central to their authority – these choices are exercises of arbitrary power. If officers simply enforced the letter of the law, their power would be constrained entirely by what is says in that law. Whereas we allow fuzzy edges to decision-making – call it discretion - you move the power away from the law and onto the individual officer.

Which brings us back to David Laws – because the administration of MPs expenses was deliberately vague, we have a system where fuzzy boundaries allowed for arbitrary and contradictory decisions. And now, with a new regime, it’s become like the attractive woman stopped by the gay cop – all the usual eyelash fluttering and cleavage revelation has no effect. She gets the ticket. Under the regime that existed before, Mr Laws’ behaviour was entirely rational – today with clear boundaries of permission, such behaviour is not rational.

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Update: It seems that David Laws has resigned - which shows he has a little bit of class in my judgment. In doing this we see once again the triumph of the prurient and of those who merely seek political advantage from others mistakes. I ask whether those baying loudest for his head on a platter are so very innocent - or are they just the same but so far fortunate enough not to get caught.

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